'Operation Helmet' launched against Spanish tomb raiders

While it might sound like something out of the movies, "Operation Helmet" has been launched by the Guardia Civil (civil guard) to recover archaeological pieces from the Celtiberian period in Spain.

As part of "Operation Helmet," the Spanish civil guard has recently recovered more than 4,000 archaeological pieces in the Zaragoza province, which pertain to different cultures, but are particularly from the peninsular Celtiberian period.

 

The latest culprit is 60-year-old Ricardo G. (surname withheld), who is a retired truffle collector from Aragon, who obviously decided to collect rather more valuable objects. The Spanish pensioner has become the unlikely mastermind behind a massive black market sale of plundered Spanish treasure.

 

Following a tip from a German museum, police raided the home of Ricardo G. to discover over 4,000 historical artifacts. It seems that the pensioner has spent the last 20 years, armed with a simple metal detector, hunting for historic artifacts. He has since been selling arrowheads, breastplates, brooches, swords and pieces of helmet discovered in the fields around his home. Many of the pieces found are from the Roman and later Vandal era and mostly date from between the third and first centuries BC.

 

According to researchers, Ricardo G. might have plundered not only the site of Aranda de Moncayo but also Tiermes, which is part of the Sorian territory of Montejo de Tiermes, known by archaeologists as "the Spanish Pompeii". Another site was probably Numancia (Garray).

 

The civil guard were initially given a tip in 2008, when the Romisch Germanisches Zentral Museum in Munich claimed that some of their exhibition pieces had left Spain illegally. The pieces were seized by prosecutors and Spanish authorities were told to reclaim them within three months.

 

Eventually, under the auspices of "Operation Helmet," the pieces have now been traced back to the Aragon region of northern Spain and the infamous Ricardo G. The culprit was arrested but has since been released pending trial for theft.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/345374